Re: 10.04 media directors not shutting down [Solved]

[jamo]

Two of my old hardware media directors (ibm t30 notebook, hp xw4100 workstation) are not halting when I tell them to shut down (power off from UI). They reboot instead. I haven't tested with my 3rd MD (newer) but I was wondering where to start troubleshooting.

[DragonK]

I normally set the to suspend in the webadmin. Then they boot up faster.
Its under advanced from the specific MD.

Karel

[JaseP]

Obvious question: What are they set to do in BIOS? Reboot after power loss?

Also, I recall something about the halt script not being right for certain systems power management configurations. There was something about changing the halt script to -p (power down) instead of -h (halt) or something.

[jamo]

Had a quick peak when I was at home a moment ago and I thought I'd solved it - the script appears to call /sbin/poweroff on the media directory. When I had a look at that it was a symlink to /sbin/reboot! Simple, so I changed the simlink to /sbin/shutdown and tried to power off the md from it's onscreen orbiter but it still rebooted! Didn't have time to tinker further... perhaps I missed something. Will carry on digging. Thanks for the pointers JaseP.

When I get that sorted, I'll tinker with suspend....sounds like a good option as well.

[JaseP]

Some machines need the shutdown to be:

Code Select Expand


shutdown -h now


Others need it to be:

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shutdown -P now


All depends on how well their ACPI is implemented...

Note: Those commands must be issued with root authority, of course.

PS: I'm pretty sure the contents of sbin are scripts,... For you to fix it, you might have to edit the appropriate script after checking which command works properly from a terminal window or [Alt] + [F1] terminal (which command works is hardware dependent and a crap shoot).

[jamo]

crikey...

Code Select Expand


shutdown -h now
shutdown -P now
shutdown -h -P now
shutdown -H -P now


Tried the lot and all of them reboot. The only way to power off at the moment seems to be to run one of those and then hit the power button before the darned thing boots up again. Will try with my other media directors and see if the same problem exists...

[JaseP]

Do a man page on the shutdown command to make sure there's no weirdness in Kubuntu's implementation of the shutdown command,... like a lowercase p instead of an uppercase P...

Else, it's either a weirdness of the particular system, or there's potentially some missing or changed library responsible. Also, try a Kubuntu 10.04 live CD to see if it shuts down normally with that.

[jamo]

Do a man page on the shutdown command to make sure there's no weirdness in Kubuntu's implementation of the shutdown command,... like a lowercase p instead of an uppercase P...

Else, it's either a weirdness of the particular system, or there's potentially some missing or changed library responsible. Also, try a Kubuntu 10.04 live CD to see if it shuts down normally with that.

Have been doing some reading.... had a look at the ACPI bios settings... nothing spectactular to report. Noted that my newer HP6710b notebook MD shuts down sweetly. I'm still not 100% sure what the "power off md" button on the onscreen orbiter actually runs but I guess until I can, from terminal, find a command that does what I want, I can't expect LMCE to do it either ;-)

Will try the live cd option to see if that works... good idea, JaseP.

[JaseP]

Yeah,... A live CD will give you an indication of whether it's completely a hardware incompatibility problem, or whether it's some fluke associated with the shutdown script that can be fixed by tracking down and editing the right script...

[jamo]

OK, I tried booting 10.04 live disk on one of the MDs and then went to command prompt and issued the "poweroff" command as root. Worked like a charm. So there does seem to be something odd about my MD image/setup. Another notable possible symptom is that when I press the "power off md" button, they pretty much stop dead (before rebooting) whereas I notice my one working MD goes through a small splash screen shutdown (the pic of tux in the chair and the yellow progress bar). So definitely something wrong...

I'm trying an apt-get update; upgrade on the one now... see if that helps. Otherwise rebuild image? delete MD and recreate?

[JaseP]

Maybe deleting and rebuilding is in order... I don't know where LinuxMCE stores its shutdown scripts, or what they do (in other words I don't know if it, excecutes a graceful exit that saves jobs in progress, or sends an abrupt signal 11, 15, 9 or whatever and cross fingers it doesn't break something). You might want the feedback from a dev on that issue.

[jamo]

No dice on the apt-get update/upgrade. Although I had to use rule#1 there and go to bed it took so long. Still power off does same thing. Next step - rebuild image. Last step delete, recreate MD.... reluctant, though, because weekend approaches and inevitably people visit and you want to show off your snazzy system.... wife suggests you put on some tunes and you have to say...ahem.... just rebuilding that media director again darling....

[JaseP]

It should only take about an hour to rebuild the MD image,... if that...

You should just leave the MDs running when you have your guests over... I leave mine running all the time.

[jamo]

Yes, will ultimately leave most of my MDs running and/or suspend as suggested by Karel. However at the moment things are experimental and my MDs are also rather power hungry beasts (old workstations and the like) so I do regularly power them off. Electricity is getting expensive in this part of the world ;-)

[pigdog]

Hi,

I downloaded snapshot 20120608011426058.

From the menu on the unit MD named Home Theatre when I go to Power and select power off it shuts down.

From the menu on the Core/Hybrid when I select power off for "Core" MD it shuts down.

Cheers